Birthday Wishes

Today is my mother’s 83^rd birthday. I made her dinner this evening: turkey breast, mashed potatoes and gravy, buttered corn, and my husband made a fruit salad (amazingly tasty for this time of the year).

I picked Sage up, and we went shopping. I finally got to see where he has been living—his first real residence away from home—and it wasn’t nearly as nasty as I’d made it out to be in my imagination. It wasn’t clean by the most generous standards, but I didn’t have to wade through the living area, and I could actually see the floor in his room.

We went to Lowe’s to get a few things on my list, then to K-Mart because it was right next door. Jade had her warm sweats stolen during indoor track season, and now that outdoor has begun, K-Mart was as good a place as any to find replacements. Joe Boxer’s were on clearance. What we didn’t find was a gift appropriate for an 83-year-old woman who doesn’t need anything else. I considered and rejected several books. She already has a “devotions” library. An abuse memoir would depress her. Anything that might have a sex scene for some reason I can’t fathom embarrasses her.

When we were near the end of our errands, at Martin’s to pick up a cake, we finally chose several plants for her garden. Green chrysanthemums. White tulips. Purple hyacinths. The ghost of the hyacinths still lingered in my car when I took Sage home many hours later.

Lately, I’ve been regretting not asking my mother more about her life. She has dementia, precursor to the Alzheimer’s that reduced both my grandmother and my aunt to children late in their lives. Ma’s memory is affected, and she’s losing her words, but she hasn’t yet lost her faces. Sometimes she’ll refer to my brother as my uncle, or my children as my siblings, but most of the time, she’ll merely lose our names, or forget who did what for her.

Last weekend, when I took her shopping, I had to admit that it hurt when she could only recall (and recount, over and over) what my brother and his wife have done for her, and then today—she seemed to have no recollection that it was me who took her to pick out and buy her new bed. It hurts, even though the truth of the matter is that I slip in and out, doing only what I need to do, whether it be taking her shopping, arranging her financial matters (usually without her direct involvement, so how can I expect her to acknowledge that?), or, like tonight, busy myself in the kitchen while she tries to engage one of my children in a discussion about the wonders of Depends.

Then I heard her tell me about my brother’s role in the purchase of her new porch furniture. She said something. She said, “I didn’t ask him. He just brought me what he thought I should have.” Then she told me that his wife picked the cushions for the chairs. And I wondered—when did she ever get what she wanted? When I took her to buy the new bed, who made the decision? I led her to the best mattress and box springs set in the store. I directed her to lay down on it. I chose the headboard, based, of course, on where the bed would have to be placed, assuring that the window would not be blocked. If I took a seat and let her roam the store, would the outcome have been different? I suspect we would have left empty-handed.

It seems it’s always been this way. My father named me. My mother wanted to call me Susan, but my father felt differently. Somewhere, she has notes that he’d leave for her before going to work with suggestions. What he wanted. Of all the notes she put in his dinner bucket, there aren’t any that say more than “I love you.” He made the decisions. My uncle and aunt named my brothers. I strain to think of one decision (other than demanding she not go to an “assisted living” home) that my mother has made for herself.

I want to ask her questions about this, but her eyes are shallow. They twinkle only when her birthday cake is placed in front of her, one solitary candle lit in the middle, and we remind her, “Make a wish!” She hesitates. She begins to say, “I wish I’m alive another…” Then her voice trails off, and she begins to blow. It takes three tries before she gets it right and the candle is extinguished. Another what, Ma? Another how many years? Does she get her wish? Just this one?

George asked me if I enjoyed the evening, and I said yes. I don’t know if it's the truth.

Till later...